My professional interest in
male violence against women dates back to 1988 when I began my
ethnographic fieldwork in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. The town has a
population of 13,000 people, which is about one fourth of the total
population of Greenland. My main focus has been on discourses on
violence against women - that is, how local people and regional
specialists talk about, write about, contextualise, represent and
explain this phenomenon in Greenland and the Arctic in general (Sorensen
1990, 1994, 1998). The dominant public discourse revolves around rapid
and extensive social and cultural change as the key explanation. The
Inuit are thus represented as a population "in transition,"
caught between their traditional world and the modern world, and
suffering from "acculturative stress" (Bjerregaard & Young
1998) or "the loss of a sense of identity and self-worth"
(Griffiths 1996:12). Bjerregaard and Young try to assess the general
mental health and well-being of the Inuit, stating that: "The Inuit
are subject to immense psychosocial stress as their communities undergo
profound social and cultural changes. In most Inuit communities, the
last 40 years, which represent little more than one generation, have
been a period when the traditional life irrevocably gave way to western
life styles" (Bjerregaard & Young 1998:149). According to this
epidemiological perspective, high rates of violence and other social
problems are symptoms of an underlying socio-cultural alienation. In
short, violence against women is seen as one of many "social
diseases" that ultimately spring from conflict-ridden societies out
of balance (cf. Sorensen 1999a). The gendered nature of violence is
often not reflected upon. I find this regional emphasis on
socio-cultural change and its preoccupation with historical causation
both interesting and disturbing, and it seems there is a certain
potential in trying to look into the relationship between expert and
local representations, but also to compare regional traditions of
representing male violence against women. Do different regional
representations spring directly from diverse empirical realities? If
not, how can they be explained? What are the implications of a
"Greenlander men in transition" approach?

Local representations

Domination by nation-states,
including "enforced," rapid modernisation and its impact on
indigenous peoples, is part of a master narrative which is not only used
by specialists, but also sometimes invoked by local people. However,
people in Nuuk seem to make use of two main explanatory approaches
depending on context (cf. Sorensen 1998:164).

When they comment on actual
local cases of wife beating (I use this term as a shorthand for men's
violence to known women), they never put the case in a larger
theoretical or (gender) political perspective, whereas the personality
and drinking behaviour of both parties usually come up. Some cases are
generally construed as "wife beating," which is a term that
entails notions of illegitimacy and reproach. Other cases are met with
indifference and "dismissal" on the grounds that "this is
their way." Phrases such as "they fight" and "it
takes two" are also common. The overall picture is that people in
Nuuk do not take sharp issue with men's use of physical
"force" in intimate relationships. Interestingly, women and
men do not differ in this regard. In any case, people focus on
individual agency when dealing with known cases of so-called
"domestic violence."

On the other hand, when
people try to reflect on and explain violence against women in Greenland
in general, they often turn to the master narrative as a main
explanatory framework, invoking the rapid development, the unbalanced
society, and the loss of the Greenlander soul. Some proceed along more
gendered lines of thinking, arguing that women have been more able to
cope with modernisation, among others because they are raised to be more
flexible than men.

The gender-oriented versions,
however, are usually just as much an excuse for men's abuse and violence
as the seemingly gender neutral epidemiological perspective. It is often
argued that the Greenlander man has been more directly confronted with
Danish dominance and competition in workplaces, politics, etc., in the
course of history. His traditional authority as a "proud
hunter" and a breadwinner has been undermined, and he is left
humiliated and bereaved of identity and status (Petersen 1994). The
dominant discourse on gender and gender relations in today's Greenland
revolves around female winners and male losers (cf. Sorensen 1998b). In
her article, "Superwoman and the troubled man", a Greenlander
woman concludes: "It is understandable that the Greenlander man
feels inferior, powerless, and even ridiculous. He has no way to deal
with his anger and his pain! He feels no one takes him seriously. So,
inevitably, all these powerful and overwhelming feelings are taken out
on the Greenlander woman. In short, that is why she is the victim of
violence and murder in Greenlander society today" (Petersen
1994:140).

Such sweeping and emotional
generalisations which make use of accumulated historical pain in order
to explain today's violence against women could easily be deconstructed
and repudiated, but this is not the place. It is of interest that the
positioned argument has a clear political address even though Greenland
has had Home Rule since 1979, which secures a high degree of
self-government. It is also of interest that a gender-oriented
perspective in the Greenlander setting is usually not equivalent to a
feminist perspective. It serves instead as an historically deep-seated
excuse for male violence. The responsibility for violence is
externalised. Violent Greenlander men just act out the anger and pain
accumulated through generations.

Both local people and
experts/scientists, who are often, but not exclusively, non-locals, can
thus be seen to share an understanding of violence as a symptomatic
reaction to circumstances beyond control. However, historical injuries
and sufferings are never brought up in everyday discourse on violence
where personality, behaviour, attitude, drinking pattern, and family
background are keys to third parties' evaluations of the situation.
Family ties and friendship with either the man or the woman are, of
course, also important in this connection. Anyway, the everyday
discursive practice is a far cry away from the master narrative. This
does not mean that violent men are not often excused on the grounds of
being drunk, being jealous, etc., or because of their wives'
"unseemly" behaviour. On the whole, however, violent men are
not totally relieved from personal responsibility.

Regional traditions

Greenland tends to be
represented as "our" cultural other. Depicted as a strange and
exotic field, it seems to both attract and call for special treatment.
Before I went to Greenland for the first time I had no reason to
question the emphasis on historical change in the regional literature. I
also had no reason to question the assumptions, which were more often
than not presented as facts, about how the rapid change had affected
people. However, living in Greenland for four years has made me
increasingly sceptic of the idea that social phenomena or problems in
Greenland are so unique that they call for special explanations (cf.
Sorensen 1999b on alcohol use and abuse). I therefore argue in favour of
some sort of common ground approach that can make use of insights gained
from other parts of the world, and not just other indigenous peoples in
the Arctic and elsewhere.

The problem with regional
traditions is that they tend to be self-centred and self-referential.
Writing about the development of anthropological ideas, Ardener states
that "anthropology at the creative stage consists of the
transmuting of a certain kind of experience into a certain kind of text.
For a time, only the actual or a similar experience can produce such
texts. Later, however, people become skilled in imitating the texts
themselves. What was once life becomes simply genre. (...) Within a
genre texts generate texts" (Ardener 1985:52). The process from
life to genre is endemic in all kinds of textual production. However, it
seems likely that a numerically small regional field like eskimology
will be more prone to reproduce the regional genre which is reflected in
the so-called master narrative.

Societies under stress

In a recent article,
McWilliams (1998) writes about violence against women in "societies
under stress", emphasising that the term itself requires some
clarification. She mentions that it could include societies that are
undergoing a process of modernisation; those experiencing the effects of
colonisation; or those in which civil disorder, terrorism, or war has
occurred. Her main focus is Northern Ireland, but she refers to a wide
range of cross-cultural studies. McWilliams (1998:138) concludes that in
societies under stress, there are fewer options for women and fewer
controls on men. Women are exposed to "extra" abuses.

McWilliams article is
reflective and her points well argumented. On the face of it, her
article could be a case in point as regards Greenland which is a former
Danish colony (since 1721) whose colonial status was abolished in 1953
when Greenland became an integral part of the Kingdom of Denmark, thus
giving Greenlanders equal status to Danes. When Greenland Home Rule was
established in 1979, the Greenlander population achieved a high degree
of self-government. Today's Greenland may thus be characterised as a
micro state. Anyway, Greenland has been colonised, and the population
has experienced the process of modernisation during the 1950s and 1960s,
especially, with local variations. If we take seriously the possibility
of "extra" abuses in Greenland, how do we go about it? The
term "extra" seems to imply comparison; either between two
moments in the historical span of Greenland, or between Greenland and
other cultures and societies.

The first option shows in
much literature on Greenland which operate within a traditional/modern
or before/after framework. These studies, of course, reflect
socio-cultural changes, but at the same time they have not been able to
explain or substantiate the exact relationship between social change and
specific social problems. One is left with the general impression that
social change is inherently stressful to Greenlanders. The second option
is less common, and mostly implicit in the regional literature. I will
look at both options in turn.

History and modernisation

Part of the problem with the
representation of Greenlanders and Inuit as populations in transition,
caught between two worlds, and marked by stress and loss of sense of
identity and self-worth, has to do with under-theorised concepts of
history and culture.

In a comment on history and
social change, Ortner problematises the conventional historiographic
approach: "To answer (...) questions with the word
"history" is to avoid them, if by history is meant largely a
chain of external events to which people react. History is not simply
something that happens to people, but something they make - within, of
course, the very powerful constraints of the system within which they
are operating" (Ortner 1994:403). Hastrup remarks in the same vein:
"No people is simply a victim of history, even though many peoples
may have been victimised by particularly forceful notions of
history" (Hastrup 1992:10-11).

Ortner makes a useful
distinction between action and re-action which can be applied to the two
main approaches to men's violence against women: the actor-oriented and
the symptom-oriented approach. While the former focuses on social actors
engaged in motivated social practice, the latter focuses on how
individuals and/or groups re-act to the (assumed) effects of external
forces.

Another related problem is
that it is often taken for granted that "traditional society"
is squarely the true Inuit society, whereas "modern society"
is introduced from outside and therefore not fully compatible with Inuit
cultural values. Cultural essentialism is evident. As an analytic tool,
the traditional/modern dichotomy tends to freeze difference into
stereotypes. It should also be mentioned that change has not come
overnight, and that different generations of Greenlanders have been
raised under different conditions. To speak of the Greenlander man, for
example, therefore represents a gross simplification. It is also a fact
that wage work among Greenlanders is not an exclusively
"modern" or recent phenomenon. As early as in 1860, about 12,5
per cent of the West Greenlander population were dependent on income
from employment in the Royal Greenland Trade Department (Marquardt
1993:97-98).

Cohen directs a harsh
critique against the early predictions of the effects of
"modernisation" and "development": "They both
assume that people can have their culture stripped away, leaving them
quite void, then to be refilled by some imported superstructure. They
assume, in other words, that people are somehow passive in relation to
culture: they receive it, transmit is, express it, but do not create
it" (Cohen 1985:36). Now as always, people appropriate foreign
goods, knowledge, ideas, forms and institutions; the foreign is
domesticated and infused with local meanings. We therefore cannot assume
that we know what social change means to local people. Some historical
anthropologists therefore distinguish between happenings and events,
according to which events are those happenings that have been
experienced and registered locally as socially significant.

Cross-cultural comparison

Nuuk and the other
Greenlander towns and settlements that I am familiar with can hardly be
described as communities under stress if this implies a lack of cultural
continuity and norms. I would characterise Nuuk as a highly moral
community in many respects, and I believe that most local people would
agree, but at the same time, people do not always live up to their own
moral standards in their everyday life. However, if one has an
epidemiological approach, each deviation from a Danish or West European
standard tends to be read as a symptom of a society out of balance. When
statistics show that the Greenlander population consume more alcohol and
have higher crime rates than the Danes, they add implicitly to
conventional thinking about "children's diseases" in a society
in transition.

As exotic as the
Greenlander/Arctic scenery may be, it seems to me that studies of social
problems within this region would profit from engaging the general
theoretical literature. The regional symptom-oriented approach is geared
towards historical causation which, ironically, seems to imply a
strategy of essentialising emotions, and introspection (cf. Abu-Lughod
& Lutz 1990). Perpetrators of violence are thus believed to be in
despair. Acts of violence, in turn, are perceived as the result/outlet
of bottled-up feelings of frustration and anger.

Such an idea of emotions is
based on the model of "heat of emotional fluid in a bodily
container," which seems to have a basis in bodily experience
(Lakoff & Kovecses 1987). This does not mean, however, that we
should take this popular model at face value. Instead, we should look at
the role of emotional discourses in social action (Lutz & Abu-Lughod
1990). This would imply asking, for instance, who feels entitled to
express anger when and towards whom. Power and control, which are key
concepts in the general literature on violence against women, are
conspicuously absent in most writings about violence in the Arctic.

If women in Greenland are
exposed to "extra" abuses, which there is reason to believe -
at least if we compare Greenland with Denmark - it is largely due to the
fact that violence is tolerated and condoned to a large degree. It has
to do with local social practice at all levels.

The problem revisited

Men's violence against women
in Greenland is basically not different from men's violence elsewhere.
Some people may give explanations that are culture specific in the sense
that they refer to local, positioned perspectives on the phenomenon. And
ideas about causation are also based on social experience which means
that they are not free-flowing, but tied to a certain cultural space.
Local discourses may thus offer important insights as they are tied up
with social practice and have material implications.

The empirical data on
violence against women in Greenland seem to suggest that the phenomenon
is simultaneously seen as a problem and minimised. According to the
so-called master narrative, men's use of violence is excused and
externalised; according to the discursive practice of everyday life, men
are held responsible, but only partly so because of many locally
perceived mitigating circumstances. The same ambivalence is reflected in
the practice of local authorities. "Domestic violence" tends
to be trivialised; it is a way of life. The split between public and
private violence means that local authorities fail to protect women in
their own homes. Instead, violence is protected by privacy. All in all,
the ambivalent stance towards men's violence against women seems to make
fertile ground for (the continuation of) a practice of violence.

The same ambivalence on the
part of both ordinary people, experts and authorities seems
characteristic of Denmark and many other countries. The difference may
be in degree rather than in kind. Most of the talk and reflections on
violence I heard in Nuuk also had a familiar ring. The conflicts of
interest between husbands and wives which Dobash and Dobash (1998)
present on the basis of studies in the UK make perfect sense in a
Greenlander context as well, and so does their statement: "The
right to punish wrongdoings, like the exercise of authority and power,
is vested in husbands and not wives, thus allowing men to be violent
simply because of their position" (Dobash & Dobash 1998:145).

Eroticised violence (cf.
Lundgren 1995, 1998) is also part of the Greenlander practice even if,
at first glance, men's violence seems to concentrate on gender boundary
maintenance, control and discipline. However, these endeavours are
likely to have a component of passion and eroticism. Fantasies of power
are fantasies of identity, and according to Moore, "sexuality is
intimately connected with power in such a way that power and force are
themselves sexualised, that is they are inscribed with gender difference
and gender hierarchy" (Moore 1994:149).

There are also clear
parallels to be drawn between gendered and ethnic violence. Both have to
do with the process of "othering." Jenkins, who has dealt with
ethnic conflict in Northern Ireland, suggests that: "Verbal abuse
and violence are concerned with the beating of ethnic boundaries through
the enforcement of definitions of what the ethnic "other" is
or must do. Power is at the heart of the matter. (...) Violence and its
threat (...) have been somewhat underestimated as a routine mechanism of
control and a strategy for achieving goals. Violence to others, up to
and including killing, may - in addition to all of its other dimensions
- be the ultimate form of categorisation“ (Jenkins 1997:65). According
to Jenkins, violence really is "putting them in their place"
(Jenkins 1997:106). I believe that Lundgren (1995, 1998) is working
along the same lines of thinking when she shows how men in a
fundamentalist Christian setting in Norway undertake the task of
constructing or moulding their wives by means of violence according to
their ideas of true femininity. During the process, the women's own
definitions of - and space for - femininity are gradually reduced until
they are erased and "killed" as individual women.

Once again, there are clear
parallels to Greenland, where violent men are preoccupied with trying to
correct and mould their wives according to their models of an ideal wife
and woman. Ironically, they try to "kill" the very same
personality that may have attracted them in the first place.

When it comes to everyday
rationalisations and motives for using violence, Greenlander men also do
not seem to differ radically from men elsewhere (cf. Dobash & Dobash
1998). A man in his thirties expressed no doubt whatsoever that he had
to silence his wife - if necessary with violent means - if she kept on
pushing and nagging. By stepping out of line and not respecting his
"case closed" attitude, she asked for it. She was responsible
for the violent outcome. When I (naively) argued that the situation seen
from her perspective might appear somewhat differently, thereby
questioning his authority and right to punish, I was ignored and
silenced as well. In his self-representation, he was the reasonable
arbiter of right and wrong.

This man's way of
rationalising is just one example out of many which all point to the
fact that many men in Greenland - and elsewhere - think that they are
entitled to set the scene, set certain standards and rules and make sure
they are kept. If a woman should happen to thwart or challenge her
husband's tactical pre-emptions (cf. Riches 1986), he will put her in
her place, and she will be held responsible according to the well-known
logic of blaming the victim.

My interviews with battered
Greenlander women showed that their men often turned to violence in
order to shut them up and putting them in their place. One of the women
summed up her husband's violent attacks in simple words: "He is
obsessed with being right always." Another woman said that her
husband had disapproved of her being too clever, outspoken and eager to
discuss all kinds of matters. He had felt threatened and provoked by her
disposition. Another female interviewee said that many men, perhaps most
men, beat to show the woman that they are stronger than she is, without
any other particular motive. Men's efforts to silence, control,
intimidate and discipline their wives in every way were recurrent in the
interviews.

Conclusion

I have tried to question a
certain regional tradition and representation, according to which men
beat their wives because they are in a transitional, stressful phase
between traditional and modern society. According to this
epidemiological perspective, poor mental health among the Greenlanders
and the Inuit accounts for violence against women and other social
"diseases." My intention is not just to problematise the
dominant representation of violence in Greenland and the Arctic, but to
contribute to a more general discussion of the relationship between
social change and violence.

It is telling that men's
violence in the Arctic is usually expected to call for a special
explanatory framework. On the face of it, this would seem to indicate an
empirically grounded approach. However, this is not the case as people
in general are not accorded agency. Consequently, the perpetrators of
violence are not seen as motivated social actors, but rather as victims
of externally inflicted change. A grounded approach must ask the
questions: What do men (in specific socio-cultural settings) gain from
using violence, intentionally and unintentionally? How is violence
possible in the first place?

People who speak and write
within the Arctic regional genre seem to be on the look-out for factors
that may explain violence and "trouble" in general, and
precisely because they are informed by structural-functionalist thinking
they have to come up with very good - or "deep" - reasons as
to why such "anti-social" and "irrational" behaviour
takes place. Instead they might have treated violence as values acted
out. Interestingly, such a perspective seems closer to the discursive
practice of everyday life among people in Nuuk.

1999a Concepts and Strategies
to Overcome Gender-based Violence: Notes on Greenland. Paper presented
at the "European Network on Conflict, Gender and Violence"
workshop at "Women's Worlds 99," Tromsù, June 20-26.

1999b Alkohol i Gronland:
Problemorienteret forskning og lokal drikkekultur (Alcohol in Greenland:
Problem-oriented Research and Local Drinking Culture). To be published
in Tidsskriftet Antropologi 39.